All That You Love Will Be Carried Away

All That You Love Will Be Carried Away The New Yorker, January 29, 2001 P. 74

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Short story about a salesman who is contemplating suicide as he studies a notebook of collected graffiti in a motel during a snowstorm... Alfie Zimmer, a Cottager gourmet food salesman, parks at a Motel 6 on U-80 just west of Lincoln, Nebraska. He gazes across a field and imagines the farmer's family inside their distant home. Alfie enters his room and prepares to kill himself. He places a gun on the pillow and reaches for his notebook in which he had copied rest area graffiti including "I suckt Jim Morrison's cock w/ my poutie boy mouth (LAWRENCE KS)," and "Poopie doopie you so loopy (PAPILLION NEB)." He records two new finds: " Save Russian Jews, collect valuable prizes (WALTON NEB)” and "All that you love will be carried away (WALTON NEB)." He thinks of a book he would have liked to put out: "'I killed Ted Bundy: The Secret Transit Code of America's Highways.' by Alfred Zimmer." He calls his wife and daughter but gets the answering machine and leaves a message. He puts the gun in his mouth then takes it out, calls home, and leaves a reminder about the dog, Rambo. Alfie worries that "they" will see the notebook after he dies and assume he was crazy. He worried that the police would read the last line as a suicide note. He thinks of hiding it, then decides to step outside into the snowstorm, and throw it into the farmer's field. He finally decides to count to sixty: If the farmer's spark lights reappear through the storm during the count, he will write the book; if not, he will pull the trigger.